Seattle City Council Transportation & Seattle Public Utilities Committee 9/5/23

Good morning and welcome.

The September 5th meeting of the Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities Committee will come to order.

The time is 9.32 a.m.

I'm Alex Peterson, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Herbold?

Here.

Councilmember Morales?

here.

Councilmember Sawant, Councilmember Strauss, Chair Peterson.

Present.

Three present.

Thank you.

Councilmembers Sawant and Strauss are excused.

If there's no objection, today's proposed agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Chair's report.

Good morning again, and welcome to the Transportation Seattle Public Utilities Committee.

Today we have four items on our agenda, one of which is for a possible vote.

First on the agenda, Seattle Public Utilities is here to introduce new proposed water rates.

Thanks to their efforts to manage their costs, SPU is proposing good news.

Customers will see a lower rise in water rates, a lower rise than previously anticipated.

Despite inflationary pressures the increase in water rates will be significantly less than what the council authorized as part of SPU strategic business plan and the rate path Second we will briefly reiterate our discussion from earlier this year regarding the list of traffic safety and other transportation projects eligible to receive transportation impact fee revenue whenever that source may be finally authorized by the City Council and As we know, impact fees are already authorized by the state and utilized by 70 other cities in Washington state.

However, the city of Seattle remains a stubborn outlier because instead of charging impact fees, we charge a slew of regressive taxes and other fees to pay for transportation projects.

We have new information since we discussed impact fee projects.

In March, in the month of May, my office engaged a national survey firm which asked 1,000 Seattle adults their views on impact fees.

And we'll go over those results, which were very positive.

We'll hopefully reiterate a majority support for impact fees here on this committee and list the next steps.

The real action takes place in the Land Use Committee next week.

This is a vital source of funding as the city considers whether to ask voters to fund another transportation infrastructure package next year when the move Seattle property tax sunsets.

Third, the Seattle Department of Transportation will present their draft Seattle Transportation Plan, or STP, which they released on August 24th.

Once finalized, the Seattle Transportation Plan document is likely to serve as a guide for transportation decision making in Seattle for the next 20 years.

The STP will also serve as the transportation element of the new comprehensive plan that state law requires cities to revamp every eight years, and that'll take place next year.

And finally, the Seattle Department of Transportation will introduce their legislation to temporarily waive their fees for food trucks and carts throughout the city.

And before public comment, I do want to have a moment of silence for the lives that ended in violence over the Labor Day weekend, including two children who died in a fire in the Wallingford neighborhood.

Thank you.

I want to thank the first responders, uh, those who showed up at the scene in Wallingford, uh, and the other incidents throughout the city.

I know the public is still seeking details on those deaths in Wallingford from the police department and the city's 911 call center.

Um, all right, well, let's go to public comment for this agenda.

Um, I will go ahead and, um, read the standard procedures for public comment.

At this time, we will open the general public comment period for the Transportation Seattle Public Utilities Committee.

For our hybrid meeting, we have people signed up to give public comment both online and in person.

The public comment for this meeting is going to be up to 20 minutes.

Each speaker is given two minutes to speak.

I'll call on the speakers two at a time in the order in which they're registered on the council's website or on the sign-up sheet here in the council chambers.

If you've not yet registered to speak but would like to, you can give You can sign up before the end of this public comment period by going to the council's website at Seattle.gov slash council or by using the sign-in sheet near the public comment microphone toward the front of this council chamber.

For remote speakers, once I call a speaker's name, staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and an automatic prompt of, you have been unmuted, will be the speaker's cue that it is their turn to speak and the speaker must press star six.

To begin speaking, press star six to begin speaking when it's your turn.

For all public commenters, please begin speaking by stating your name and the item that you are addressing.

As a reminder, public comment should relate to an item on today's agenda or to our committee's oversight responsibilities.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.

So when you hear the chime, you keep going for another 10 seconds, but start to wrap up your comments.

If speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's microphone will be muted to allow us to call on the next speaker.

If you're providing public comment remotely, once you have completed your comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line, and if you plan to continue following the meeting, please do so via the award-winning Seattle Channel, or using the listening options listed on the agenda.

So the regular public comment period for this committee meeting is now open, and we'll begin with the first speaker on the list.

Let's go ahead and do the, we'll go ahead and do the online speakers first.

We're gonna go ahead and start with Rebecca Slider, followed by Brad Reisinger.

Go ahead, Rebecca.

And do we need to show the clock?

We'll be doing that in a minute.

Okay.

We're in a second.

Rebecca, go ahead and press star six.

Okay.

Yes.

Great.

Hi, Rebecca Slider.

I live in District 4 and I'm calling about the transportation plan.

To request that the council prioritize the aspects of the transportation plan that achieve our Vision Zero goals above all else.

I have confidence that our current approach is not working, and we must take much bolder action to end traffic deaths and injuries.

For example, on a walk to Gatford Park this summer, I was carrying my five-week-old, and a sling was delighted to use the new crosswalk across North Lake to access the park.

As I was crossing, a driver slammed on her brakes.

When I stopped to look at her, she actually accelerated towards me and my five-month-old.

I was in that crosswalk.

I had the right of way.

This is just one of many examples.

I emailed the council just this morning about yet another illegal right turn on red on Stoneway.

I was almost hit this morning jogging on the park.

Signage is clearly not enough.

Regulation is clearly not enough.

We need to begin creating infrastructure that privileges walkers and rollers above all others.

And we need to enforce when drivers misuse or disrespect that infrastructure.

Our lives and the lives of our children, including my five-week-old baby, who will very soon be walking and using this infrastructure, depend on it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we have Brad Reisinger, followed by Pat Foley.

Go ahead, Brad.

Good morning, Councilmembers.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

Did the transportation impact the proposal on today's agenda?

My name is Brad Reisinger.

I live in District 7. I'm the West Coast Regional President for Cortera.

a wholly owned subsidiary of Lennar, one of the country's largest home builders.

Over the last 10 years, we've built or are building more than 2,400 apartment homes in Seattle.

We have voluntarily participated in the MFTE program on each of the new communities.

That's over 500 new affordable homes for our middle-income earners.

It includes 110 homes at Ovation, the first high-rise to participate in the MFTE program.

Furthermore we have voluntarily performed our MHA obligations on site at both eligible communities.

We care about this community and its affordability.

As a resident of Seattle I first and foremost want to do what is best for our city and impact fees at this time are not it.

Our industry is in despair.

Rising costs and now high interest rates have completely flipped the switch on the financeability of new development.

With cap rates moving from sub 3 percent to over 5 percent we have seen values plummet.

It now costs approximately 20 percent more to build in Seattle than it does to buy an existing community.

We cannot exacerbate this trend.

Seattle is seeing very few new permits for multifamily housing.

FDI's tracker shows that in the second quarter of 2023 new permits are down 62 percent over the last year and by thousands of units from 2019. Now, add transportation impact fees to this scenario, which equates to thousands of dollars per home, millions of dollars per project, and we will not be able to finance our new development.

It's too much.

Projects are already not financeable, and adding this tax will only exacerbate the problem.

For example, at U Village, we have

Thank you.

Next, we have Pat Foley, followed by Deb Barker.

Go ahead, Pat.

Hi, good morning, Councilmembers.

Councilmember Fuston, thanks for the opportunity to talk.

Again, I'm Pat Foley with Lake Union Partners.

I'm a co-founder of the company, and we're a local development company.

We've built thousands of units in Seattle, as well as we've done a lot of historic preservation in the city.

And we try very hard to create mixed income communities.

For example, we created and developed the Midtown Square project at 23rd and Union.

And we transacted and sold 20% of that block to Africa Town Community Land Trust.

So across the full block, we're now 50% affordable, 50% market rate.

We're doing the same thing down at Grand Street Commons at Rainier and Grand Street, right next to the future light rail station that's close to being open.

These transportation impact fees, if proposed, if moved forward, we would not have been able to develop either of those projects, which would have significantly limited the amount of additional affordable units or mixed income units in the city.

So I would just tell you that I would also echo what Brad just said about the applications into the city are down to a very, very slow pace right now.

So we need to keep up with housing production.

I really think now is a better time to be focusing on policies that bring housing to market quicker.

I understand the need for transportation funds, but we also have a transportation levy renewal that's coming up.

I think you're all aware of that.

And it's also just a much more appropriate funding source for these transportation projects.

I'm fully in agreement with that and excited about it.

So rather than asking renters to flip the bill through higher rents, rents can only be what the market says they are.

If we can't build projects, then rents just go up in the city.

So I just urge the council to take all of these things into consideration when evaluating the impact fees.

So I'd ask you not to move them forward.

Thanks so much.

Next, we have Deb Barker.

Go ahead, Deb.

Good morning, council members, and hello, September.

May the rain hold off.

so that all the key transportation projects can be completed.

I was going to have a fairly broken record type of promotion for the traffic impact fees because I've been supporting traffic impact fees and transportation impact fees for the last 15 years.

I am a former employee of a municipality that gratefully adopted traffic impact fees and was very successful in having a budget that didn't, having a transportation budget that did not break a bridge.

No, I won't go there.

Oh, by the way, Deb Barker District 1. However, today I am sick and tired of hearing about developers who are against traffic impact fees because all of their financial woes for whichever financial disaster is going on right now, whether I've heard this said in 2008 and in 2015. And when does the financial position of the city of Seattle and the city's transportation infrastructure start to count?

Support, please, traffic impact fees.

It is a known effective tool.

Don't you feel somewhat foolish, ridiculous for being one of the only cities that just can't bring itself to adopt these.

Things will progress and financial situations will resolve and developers will continue to make their funding and make their money, but transportation impact fees need to be adopted now.

Please support transportation impact fees.

The bridges rely on it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And in person, we've got Eli Johnson.

Hello.

My name is Eli Johnson.

I represent a GovTech startup called Glass based in Silicon Valley.

We recently adopted a blanket.

Contract the city of Seattle.

I'm trying to grow that partnership.

So I just started this week, but I want to make a physical presence basic glass commerce is a Marketplace or website sort of like Amazon where you can procure all the items that you need and Of course, the transportation, public utilities, that can be many things from paper clips, paper to, you know, trucks and cars and things like that.

I think what really sets us apart is our vendor team.

So if you can't find a certain item, we can find the vendor that has that, like the minimum that you need.

If you want to buy from, say, like, minority-owned, veteran-owned, local business, we will find them for you, and we will be able to act as the conduit of the entire process.

So we find what you need.

We find the vendor that you need.

We talk to the vendor if you want to do bids.

Oh, they don't have to.

We can help with a purchasing order.

We give all the information they provide us, but if you want to know if there's anything like warranty, we can tell you that.

So instead of having to You know, sort of have a mess of different Excel sheets and find your own things like that.

Since we've already started this relationship, I just wanted to be physically here to sort of promote how we could help local businesses together, help Citi, help our company itself.

I know this is all very virtual, but I want to be here in person just to know that now that we've started this relationship, I would like to be, you know, and I am the first person that you can talk to if you're having problems procuring things or problems with vendors or finding things or problems with minimums or anything like that.

Like I said, we already have a Seattle portal.

So again, my name is Eli Johnson.

You can reach me at eli.johnson.commerce.glass 360-870-1687.

I would really like to meet in person.

And I know this is all virtual, but thank you for your time.

Thank you.

And that concludes our list of public commenters.

So we'll go ahead and close out the public comment period.

Okay, so we need the clerk to, we'll ask the clerk to please read the full title of the first agenda item into the record.

Agenda item one, a draft ordinance relating to rates and charges for water services of Seattle Public Utilities, revising water rates and charges and credits to low income customers and amending sections 21.4.430, 21.4.440 and 21.7640 of the Seattle Municipal Code for briefing and discussion.

Thank you, colleagues.

Seattle Public Utilities is here to walk us through their periodic update to water rates.

As a reminder, Seattle Public Utilities operates within a set rate path set by resolution.

It's a six-year time horizon for its three main lines of business, water, solid waste, and wastewater.

We typically see an increase in those rates every year to keep up with rising costs.

The rate increase that Seattle Public Utilities is proposing with this council bill is significantly less than expected when compared to the current approved rate path.

and is well below the rate of inflation.

So I'm really proud of Seattle Public Utilities for heeding our calls to prioritize low rates and manage their costs.

I'd also like to commend the diligent oversight board of the customer review panel for their steadfast efforts to monitor costs and rates at SPU.

And we'll see today how SPU's efforts benefit all 750,000 of our constituents and more.

We'll hear this for the first time today and then again at our next committee meeting on September 19th, when I'm hoping we can pass their council bill out of our committee.

And I do want to, before I turn it over to our presenters at SPU, I want to thank Brian Goodnight from our Council Central staff for his ongoing review of the legislation thus far.

The legislation we have in front of us is just the draft language and the bill will be formally introduced before our next committee meeting and then we'll act on it.

Then we'll also hear from Brian Goodnight.

at that point on September 19th committee.

With that, I'll turn it over to our presenters from Seattle Public Utilities.

Welcome to our general manager and CEO of SPU, Andrew Lee.

Thank you, Chair Peterson and members of the committee.

As Chair Peterson mentioned, we're here this morning to brief you on Seattle Public Utilities proposed water rates for the years 2024 through 2026. Each year, we bring the Council a rate proposal for one of our three lines of business, water, drainage and wastewater or solid waste, for consideration on a three-year cycle.

And this year, we are doing the water line of business.

You will recall that about two years ago, the Council approved a six-year strategic business plan, which guides SPU investments, service levels and rate paths through 2026. And as Council Member Peterson mentioned, I'm happy to report that our proposed new water rates are well below those that were adopted in SPU's strategic business plan.

The key reasons for that include the fact that we're in a better starting financial position due to a reduced debt burden, and we're also projecting lower spending than we estimated earlier.

With that introduction, I'm going to hand it off to SPU's Finance Director, Carl Stickel, to provide more detail on our water rates proposal.

Thank you.

Thanks, Andrew.

Hello.

My name is Carl stickle.

I'm with the finance division here at Seattle public utilities, and I'm here to talk about our water rate study recommendations for updating water rates beginning next year.

2024 through 2026. So I'll walk through the proposed rates as they compare to the current strategic business plan.

I'll give you some examples of water bill impacts and highlight some of the rate design work that went into this proposal.

And then we have a few background slides on our water system and the water fund revenues and spending.

So, without further ado, here's our proposal as it relates to the Strategic Business Plan.

There are two tables here.

The top table shows the Council-approved Strategic Business Plan rate path.

In the lower right-hand corner of this top table, it shows the combined average rate of 4.2%.

And this is the rate that we try to stay at or come in below it.

The bottom table shows the updated individual rates as adopted by council in gray as well as our water rate proposal, which is in blue.

We're proposing a consistent rate path of 2% over the 3 year period.

This is below inflation for the next 3 years and presents a smooth and affordable rate path for customers.

You'll notice it's for a water line of business.

It's significantly lower than what we had assumed in the strategic business plan.

And the other good news here is that with these proposed water rate changes, we'll continue to stay under that approved average combined rate.

So, if you look at.

the right-hand corner of the bottom table, you'll see it's at 4%, which is lower than the adopted 4.2% from the upper table.

The major changes related to the lower rates include some reduced spending, about $7 million annually in operations and maintenance reductions.

And with the capital program, we experienced a reduction in CIP spending in 2021 through 2023 due to supply chain and workforce limitations.

At the same time, we achieved considerable savings from the 2021 and 2022 bond issuances that saved us interest as we restructured our debt service.

The reduced CIP spending also allowed for no bond issuance in 2023, which reduced our debt service assumptions for 2024. Our debt service is about $11 million less than what we had assumed in the strategic business plan.

So that's just more savings that we can pass on to rate payers.

We also adjusted our drinking water consumption projections.

Residential went up when people were working from home, and likewise, commercial went down considerably.

With the pandemic impacts mellowing out a little, we're expecting consumption to rise in 2024 and 2025, but remain relatively flat in 2026, particularly as the commercial sector ramps up its consumption to pre-pandemic levels.

We've also increased our utility discount program assumption for each year of the water rates about $500,000 a year.

Uh, here's a table of the expected bill impacts with the rates proposal.

Right now, the typical residential bill for water is about 4866 a month.

With the current rates, we don't anticipate any increase in 2024 for residential because of the volume changes in the rate study.

The increase in residential volumes due to work from home makes.

Makes the current rates sufficient for the residential class to meet our needed revenue projections.

So, for a typical residential customer, there'll be no bill change in 2024. Followed by increases of a dollar in 2025 and a dollar 5 in 2026. However, for commercial, they are seeing some increases across the board.

Bills for commercial customers increase more quickly in 2024 to meet the revenue requirements.

One item I'd like to point out here is the 90 unit apartment buildings.

So the building would see a $55 increase starting in 2024. How apartment units get billed for water and other sort of metered utilities is at the discretion of the property managers.

But the per unit increase in the 90 unit building is about a $1.22 Um, by 2026, and you compare that to single family residences and by 2026, they would have an increase of about 2 dollars and 5 cents.

So, on the whole, single family residences are paying more than renters.

One area we wanted to focus on for this study was revenue stability.

The majority of our revenue is consumption based, meaning we charge for what you use.

It's a very conservation forward approach.

Many utilities rates have a model focused on fixed charges in an effort to stabilize their revenues.

The regional and I think national average is over 40% of revenue comes from fixed charges.

while SBU had 25.7% in 2022. The rate study proposal increases fixed charges just slightly to 27.7% by 2026, but that really helps with our revenue stability.

SBU feels that after the turbulence of COVID, right now the benefits of increased revenue stability sort of outweigh the downsides of a reduced conservation price signaling.

Also worth noting is that our residential consumption forecast leads to, again, no increase in the rate for 2024. Speaking of COVID, the water system has seen declining consumption for a long time.

More recently, system-wide consumption was below forecast for 2019 and 2020 due to the pandemic.

Consumption has appeared to have stabilized somewhat after the 2020 disruption, though at a slightly lower level than average.

The forecast moving forward is similar to what occurred in 2022 and what is projected for 2023. Water revenue comes from a diverse set of customers.

Looking at the pie chart in 2022. Retail rate customers provided about 71% of operating revenue.

That's residential and commercial residential customers.

Residential customers provided 35%, while commercial customers provided about 36%.

Commercial is still recovering from the pandemic and is usually around 38% of retail revenue.

Our wholesale customers provide about 20% of our revenue.

If you look at the bar chart on the right, expenditure growth is expected to average about 3.5% for the three years in the rate study, 24 through 26. And the primary drivers for the growth are listed there.

Operations and maintenance is projected to grow about 6.1% a year.

That's payroll, healthcare, pension, fuel costs, supply costs, things like that.

Taxes are expected to increase 2.5% over that time period.

And surprisingly, debt service is expected to decline from 2023 levels.

Debt service is declining about 8 million in 2024 due to lower capital spending and less borrowing in recent years.

So in addition, You know, we've worked hard to maximize our debt refinancing opportunities to lower debt service, including achieving about 5.5M in savings over the rate period from refinancing bonds in 2021 and 2022. Next steps, as Council Chair Peterson has mentioned, Council Central staff will present their summary to you on the 19th.

with the hope for a full council vote on the 26th, assuming committee approval to move forward.

Thank you.

And could we keep the presentation up in case we have any questions?

And colleagues, we will be hearing this item again on September 19 at our committee.

And Brian, good night from central staff.

So far, we've not seen any red flags.

Obviously, it's good news that the rate is lower than anticipated.

I can start off the comments and questions here.

Would you mind going back to slide six?

And I think you touched on this, but just wanted to put up.

point on a finer point on this.

So there's the bullet point, the third one, under the first bullet point, the third sub-bullet point, it says conservation message from increasing summer rates still applies to residential customers.

I just paid my bill yesterday, and so there it Just to confirm, in terms of conserving water, there is still that built-in higher price point as the quantity goes up, correct?

So it encourages people to conserve water because they pay more as the quantity passes certain thresholds, is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

Okay, good.

Let's see here.

Are there any other comments or questions from colleagues on this?

Again, we'll hear it in two weeks at our committee again, so there's no pressure.

Have any questions now?

So I really do want to commend Seattle Public Utilities, again, for managing their costs, bringing the rate path down, especially for the water rates here.

I believe the six-year average was 3.4% increase, and now it's going to be 2%.

So that drop in 1.4 points from 3.4 to 2. is on a percentage basis a drop of 41 percent.

So, and I really appreciate that you still have the conservation price points in there as well.

So, this is a good for consumers.

You know, Seattle Public Utilities, everybody pays this bill in one way or another, so bringing the rates down is is helpful because utility bills are regressive, and so, of course, I can't resist putting in a plug for the bill that we've introduced, Council 120602. I introduced it on June 13th, and I hope it'll gain support when it comes to the Finance Committee or Budget Committee later this year.

That's to repeal the water tax.

that City Hall charges to all SPU customers, the 15.5%.

And that has gained support since it's been introduced.

We've got, of course, SPU's customer review panel supports it, Mercy Housing, Chief Seattle Club, the Low Income Housing Institute, Solid Ground, and the founder of the Progressive Think Tank, Economic Opportunity Institute.

support eliminating that regressive tax on our drinking water.

Again, that's Council Bill 120602. We'll talk more about that later.

Colleagues, any other comments or questions before we move on to the next item?

Okay.

I want to thank SPU, the leadership, and the team that works on these, and everybody throughout the organization who's worked to manage costs so we could pass those savings on to our constituents.

All right.

We'll see you back September 19th.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thanks, Carl.

Thanks.

All right.

Will the clerk please read the full title of the second agenda item into the record?

Agenda Item 2, Project List for Transportation Impact Fees for Briefing and Discussion.

Thank you, colleagues.

And this is just a briefing and discussion.

The real action is taking place in the Land Use Committee, but we did want to revisit this here.

We did go over a project list for projects that would be eligible for transportation impact fee revenue back in March.

We have some new information today.

As we've heard many times, one of our speakers, impact fees are already authorized by the state and utilized by 70 other cities in Washington.

However, the city of Seattle remains a stubborn outlier.

We are charging other taxes and fees to pay for transportation projects.

Back in March.

We had an update from our City Council central staff on the long list of transportation projects eligible for transportation back fees It's basically anything in the modal plans that we have for pedestrians and transit because we have a limited time between now and the start of our budget review season and next week the land-use committee will be discussing a necessary but but insufficient condition to charge impact fees and which would be a quick amendment to the comprehensive plan.

I thought it made sense to repost the wide array of projects that could be funded, so they're attached to our agenda, and to discuss the additional support for impact fees.

Whenever City Hall finally authorizes impact fees, we can use that revenue to fund.

Like I said, most projects in the modal plans that we have, pedestrians, transit, freight, bikes, to advance our Vision Zero goals.

We heard somebody talking about the need to improve our infrastructure to do that.

That takes money.

But the council and the mayor need to act.

We have new information.

In the month of May, my office engaged a national survey firm which asked 1,000 Seattle Dots their views on impact fees.

This statistically valid survey confirms what many of us already suspected, overwhelming public support for impact fees.

In fact, the number is 75% supported impact fees.

After being asked pro and con questions about impact fees, there was still a durable super majority of support.

More than two-thirds still supported impact fees after the back and forth questions.

So, I believe that people see impact fees as a vital source of funding before the city considers asking voters to fund another transportation infrastructure package next year when the move Seattle property tax sunsets.

The good news is we can exempt low-income housing projects, child care centers, and nonprofit facilities from those impact fees.

If Seattle were to set the rates, if Seattle sets rates that are comparable to neighboring jurisdictions and if Seattle experiences similar growth, an impact fee program could generate $500 million over 10 years.

And for context, the Move Seattle levy was a $930 million over nine years.

So basically, it could cover half of that cost.

In the spirit of progressive tax reform, which is long overdue in Seattle, imposing this one-time fee, or it's one time for projects, it could help to actually lower property taxes going forward, depending on how we structure an infrastructure package.

So in addition to this poll we conducted, which confirms supermajority support for MBEC fees, we received a letter dated July 22nd from the Transit Riders Union, which stated in part, it's quote, support of adding a proposed project list drawn from the modal plans to the comprehensive plan this fall, end quote.

Their letter stated that the Transit Riders Union urges the council to support this first step in keeping transportation MBEC fees on the table as a funding source.

And the letter noted that impact fee revenue can fund transportation projects needed to get Seattle on track in meeting its stated climate goals.

Then on August 16, we received a letter from Anna Zavartz, the director of the Disability Mobility Initiative, calling on the city council to fund the construction of missing sidewalks.

And her letter stated, quote, the Disability Mobility Initiative supports the city council exploring transportation impact fees as a possible source for the necessity of increasing funding for this essential need of sidewalks.

So, colleagues, today we've got Council Members Herbold and Morales with us.

Did you have any comments on this?

I also do have a statement from Council Member Sawant, who was not able to join us today.

Hi, Council Member Herbold.

Okay, there's a presentation associated with this item, correct?

The presentation was really just, we had the poll results.

We just wanted to put that on the agenda to note that we've received a couple of letters in support.

We know the real action is taking place next week in the Land Use Committee.

So this was really just to get this information out because we have such limited time to take action.

and very helpful.

Um, I know, uh, from talking with you, Council Member Peterson, that, uh, Kato Freeman has been doing a lot of great work on, um, not just impact fees, but other fees that are allowed by other jurisdictions.

Is that information that will be provided in the land use committee next week?

Um, I don't know.

Yeah, I just, I remember there were some fantastic charts that show sort of where Seattle lies in comparison to those other cities.

I think that information, particularly hearing concerns from housing developers, it'd be really important to share that with our colleagues soon.

Yes, I can put that up on my website as well, peterson.seattle.gov, and then you just search for impact fees, and there is a chart, a bar chart right now up there that shows that You know, we're the only city that doesn't charge impact fees.

And then there's another bar chart that was developed by central staff which shows that even if you were to count mandatory housing affordability fees, we would, and then we added impact fees on top of that for transportation, we would still be in line with several competing jurisdictions.

And noting that MHA, that was an exchange for additional density that benefited the developments, but even if you were to just show that as just a cost and not a benefit, we would still be in line with other jurisdictions when you combine all those fees, because we do want to be sensitive to the fact that there are multiple fees being charged, and even with those, we are in line.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, I just I found I found that information to be to be so incredibly compelling and shall we say myth busting about the impact of transportation.

impact fees.

And just as you said, Mr. Chair, this step is only to incorporate into the comp plan the bike, ped and transportation project, transit projects and other transportation projects that would be eligible for impact fees should a program be passed.

in the future.

It does not in itself establish a rate or a program.

And much of the concerns that we're hearing I think is more related to the potential rate of a transportation impact fee.

And I really think this conversation that we're having right now and at the land use committee is Only about preserving the ability to take to deliberate on those those next steps.

We can't talk about establishing a transportation impact fee until we incorporate.

into the comp plan a potential project list.

So it's very much a procedural requirement.

And again, it's not itself established a transportation impact fee.

I think another really important point to make is that you yourself have made, Mr. Chair, is that the move levy renewal will be up next year.

Needs are high for both maintenance And and other other infrastructure, and we know that.

Transportation impact fees can't be used for things that are maintenance like they, the transportation impact fee could only be used for.

infrastructure needs associated with growth.

So, like, the backlog of maintenance needs is not something that transportation impact fees can address, but the levy can.

And so preserving as much of the levy as we can for this purpose, while looking at making new investments associated with growth, with future discussions around transportation impact, because I think it's an important conversation to have leading up to the levy.

And, you know, again, the rate study that we've all talked about, it's a potential rate structure.

Any program that was established could be set at any level below that.

And we have repeatedly referenced the fact that I think Our intention as supporters of transportation impact fees has been to include exceptions for low income housing.

We've also talked about exceptions for for child care facilities as well.

So, I think.

This is an important conversation.

It's a conversation we've been having since 2014, at least and appreciate the public comment that we heard today expressing some amount of frustration that.

The council has not yet acted and I'm again, I'm really hoping that the conversation in the land use committee combined with the great central staff analysis that we were talking about earlier can can take us this sort of next baby step towards deliberation around a program.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Rollin.

Thank you for co-sponsoring that amendment to the comp plan, Council Bill 120635, which we'll be talking about next week in the Land Use Committee.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you, Chair.

Sorry, I'm still having some computer issues here, so I'm still on my phone.

So I want to thank you for bringing this forward for discussion.

I am looking forward to the conversation in the Land Use Committee.

And I agree that this is an important tool for us to be able to increase our options for how we address the infrastructure that we will be seeing in the future.

I will say, you know, I, this is probably a conversation we'll have in the land use committee, but I am also interested in making sure to the extent possible that some of our other.

Uh, you know, permitting and design processes that also contribute to the cost of these projects.

Can be mitigated, I think if we are able to do both.

You know, reduce the time it takes for a project to get permitted dramatically reduce it.

It takes far too long.

Uh, that can help address some of the challenges that developers have with having their projects pencil.

So I'm also, I think this is gonna have to be kind of a both end conversation and I'm looking forward to that conversation and really looking forward to the opportunity to include this as an option in the comp plan so that we can really dig into what a program might look like in the future.

So thank you for bringing this forward.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

And I do, I did receive, appreciate Council Member Sawant who was not able to be here.

She did send a statement.

So I'll go ahead and read that into the record for Council Member Sawant.

So again, this is from Council Member Shama Sawant.

Developer impact fees are just a small tax on the corporate developers who have made hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars in profit.

But like all other taxes on big business, most Democratic Party politicians never seem interested in putting developer impact fees to a vote.

The bureaucratic labyrinth working people are required to navigate in order to even bring them to a vote is staggering.

There needs to be a study into the infrastructure, then an environmental impact report, then an amendment to the comprehensive plan, and only then can there be actual legislation.

Because all other steps happen behind closed doors, there are many opportunities for the political establishment to quietly avoid a vote, as they have done for the past half decade.

Most Democrats simultaneously opine about budget shortfalls and ignore the possibility of impact fees that could fund tens of millions of dollars each year for transit, roads, and parks.

And in the past nine years, as in the past nine years, I continue to urge the council to pass developer impact fees.

Even now when the studies are all complete and there are no legal obstacles to implementing impact fees on wealthy developers, I expect some council members will maneuver to attempt to prevent a vote.

Thank you, Councilmember Swann, for sending that statement.

I read part of it.

And so, really appreciate your support as well for impact fees.

You've been a leader on this.

I know you had us also amend the Seattle Transportation Benefit District with recitals calling for impact fees back in 2020. So, really appreciate that support.

Just wanted to...

hear that support today as we get ready for next week.

Again, next steps, the impact fee amendment to the comp plan, which is Council Bill 120635. is scheduled to be discussed in the land use committee.

We actually can't vote on that until the budget process, the annual amendment period for the comp plan was already used up for the maritime industrial land use updates earlier this year.

Therefore, according to state law, we can make additional amendments to the comp plan only at the time the council adopts the budget, which would be in November.

So thank you for letting us use up some of this time today to talk about this.

Yes, Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you so much.

So the Land Use Committee action, there is a committee vote planned, but it will be just a recommendation for the full council to consider at the time of the budget passage.

Is that correct?

Well, I think they'll at least be a discussion of the items.

Not sure there'll be a committee vote, but there'll be enough discussion so that if we are able to act in November, then we can act, but I can't speak for the chair.

Okay.

Very, very helpful.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Well, let's go ahead and move on to the third agenda item.

Will the clerk please read the full title of the third agenda item into the record?

Agenda item three, draft Seattle transportation plan for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

All right.

So the Seattle Department of Transportation is here to present their draft Seattle transportation plan that they released August 24th.

And once finalized, the document is likely to serve as a guide for transportation decision making in Seattle for the next 20 years.

The STP will also serve as a transportation element of next year's comprehensive plan, which we revamp every eight years.

And a lot of work has been put into this.

presentation and the Seattle Transportation Plan.

And so I'll reserve my comments for afterwards.

So good morning, Director Spatz.

Good morning.

How are you today?

All right.

I'm okay.

You doing okay?

Definitely, yeah.

I'm very, very happy to be here to present this important item.

And I'm extremely impressed with and grateful to all of the staff at SDOT who's worked on this More than 100 people have touched it at one time or another.

And our fearless co-leads, Jonathan and Joanna, are here and have done an amazing job.

And there's a couple of just introductory comments I'd like to make.

There's two very important new things about the Seattle transportation plan that are different than how this type of planning has been done in the past that I want to highlight for you.

One is that in the past SDOT had individual modal plans.

We had a bike plan, we had a freight plan, we had a pedestrian plan, and a transit plan.

And those plans were made at different times, sometimes by different people.

And there's a limit to how useful a single mode plan might be, and that it doesn't necessarily envision where multiple modes may need to coexist.

It's a tremendous piece of work to create an all modal plan, which is what this draft comprises, not only superseding all four of those plans, but with new elements like for public space activation.

And what it will do for us is enable us to identify corridors and locations where we have multiple priorities so that we can think through creating thoughtful projects with the community.

address those common and shared needs.

The second thing I want to mention is.

There's been a very modern, thoughtful and equity oriented outreach as part of this process, which I'm very impressed with and proud of, and it's really inspired by the transportation equity plan that equity framework that TEF that S dot had was just putting in place when I arrived a year ago.

And one of the reasons why I took the job is I was so impressed with this framework on how to conduct transportation planning and implementation more equitably.

And so for this Seattle transportation plan, we've made unprecedented efforts to take the conversation to people who don't even know there's a table.

It's like rather than just inviting more people to the table, bringing the table to people.

Of the many, many examples of innovative outreach that I happen to witness that I'd like to share with you is we worked with a community-based organization who works with the Khmer community, who are folks from the country normally called Cambodia.

And we identified a group of youth and a cohort of elders and took them on a series of transit field trips and then had in-language, culturally relevant dialogue about how what their needs might be for the transportation system.

And we had a sort of a wrap-up event after all these activities.

And this group of Khmer elder women actually catered the event.

They all cooked for everybody from home.

And I got to sit with them.

And this experience of having the government reach out to them in their language, with opportunities to actually experience the transit system, and comment upon it and what their transportation needs are.

It was not only meaningful for them to be part of it, but folks took me aside and said, in their country, their government had done violence to them and their families, and they had a deep distrust of government.

And it was very healing to interact with us in this way.

So I'm very, very proud of the team for engaging in a kind of depth of outreach to underserved communities and underrepresented communities that informs this plan.

And with that, I'll pass it to the team to get into some of the details.

Jonathan, are you up?

I'm actually up Greg.

So, oh, Joanna.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, thank you.

Thank you.

Council member Peterson and chair chair Peterson and committee members.

We're happy to be back with you today.

Having been to the council last on February.

20, 23, just earlier this year, where we shared some of what we were hearing from the community.

Since then, we have been working on developing to draft is council member Peterson noted that we launched in.

On August 24th, and today we hope to provide.

Some highlights of the draft plan and some quick updates on the.

And so next slide.

Um, just real quickly touching base on the relation of the with the comprehensive plan.

And so the slide, sorry next slide.

I'm not sure.

Okay, perfect.

Thank you.

This slide kind of highlights what the relationship with the 1 Seattle comprehensive plan, which is being developed parallel to this work where we are as council member Peterson developing the 20 year vision for for the transportation network of the city of Seattle.

Meanwhile, complimentary to Seattle comprehensive plan is developing the 20 year land use.

A vision for the city of Seattle, and as noted earlier by chair Peterson.

The, the comprehensive plan will contain the as part of the transportation elements of the comprehensive plan, containing division and policies for the transportation network.

For the next 20 years, the itself will contain the goals, key moves and performance measures, essentially the implementation and strategy of how we reach division and policies that complements.

The transportation network, and so as the comp plan is looking to accommodating growth for almost.

An expectation of almost 1Million people, the complimentary.

Transportation system that will serve that growth is being addressed through through the.

I really want to shout out that the is our 1st city wide multimodal plan that attempts attempts to integrate all key functions of the right away into a single plan.

So really a robust conversation and being able to holistically look at our transportation system all at once.

Um, in regards to what we've been up to since for this project next slide shows some of the timeline that we've been stepping through all the way from kicking this project off back in May 2022. we've had 2 phases of engagement to receive community feedback on items such as challenges opportunities.

The vision goals, the key moves to make to, to ensure that we reach division and goals.

And feedback on the transportation network maps for the city is outlined there on on the timeline shown on the screen.

Um, we are now launched in our 3rd phase of engagements, which started on August 24th and released the draft for public review and comments.

Additionally, the draft environmental impact statement is also out for public comments.

After the close of comment period, staff will continue to refine the SCP based on community feedback as well as develop the final environmental impact statement.

We anticipate the City Council consideration for adoption in early 2024, where a public hearing process will occur as part of that process as well.

At this time, I'd like to hand it over to Jonathan Lewis to go over the components of the Seattle Transportation Plan.

All right, thank you, Joanna and Director Spatz and Council Member for having us today.

So when you start to take a peek at the transportation plan, it can be a little overwhelming for most folks.

So I thought we'd take some time today to walk through the different pieces and how what's called on the website, the part one and part two documents work together.

So for 90% to 99% of folks that live in Seattle have an interest in this plan, there's what's called the Part 1 document.

And this includes, on this diagram, the vision goals and the key moves.

And this is written to be more like the People magazine of transportation plans.

Very much easier to read, more pictures and graphics.

For those that want to dig into the details, there's what's called the Part 2 document.

It's many, many times longer and has a lot more detail.

So if you're the type of person out there that is interested in all those gritty details, policy details, that 600-plus page document is for you.

So let's take a look up next 16 or so slides, kind of step you through the different pieces here.

So at the very top is the vision statement.

Got a lot of community engagement and workshop this vision statement through several rounds of the engagement process.

You can see that current draft version here.

It's the long-term aspirational kind of what's the end state 20 years out look like for the transportation system.

Nested under that on the next slide are our six goals.

And this is the icons here and these goals are a really important organizing frame for the entire document, both part one and part two.

So you'll see these little icons and these six goal statements showing up all the way through from the key moves into the part two document, all of the elements, and then also into the implementation strategy.

That's great.

On the next slide, that's fine.

Sorry, Bill, back to the key move slide.

I think back to...

There you go.

So under the goals are what's called the key moves.

We have 23 of these and still in the Part 1 document.

And these are key and important strategic directions for the department.

As Joanna and Greg mentioned, these are the things that a lot of times cut across the mode-specific planning that we had done in the past.

And in some ways, some of this work was kind of falling in the interstitial spaces in the department, really wanted to elevate and showcase these kind of cross-cutting actions.

And then all the while anchoring them to our goals.

So if you're watching from home, buckle up the next, like, I don't know, maybe 10 slides, kind of walk through this Probably more detail than most folks are interested in, but it's really the heart of the plan.

So I wanted to spend some time here today.

Alright, so the 1st is safety.

Uh, vision 0 continues to be a top priority for the department.

Um, our comprehensive plan that says we lead with safety and our decision making for streets, um, over all other considerations and, um.

and that is continued to be centered in this work.

It builds on the work of the mode-specific plans, which had a lot of mode-specific safety strategies, and then we're able to also build on the recent top-to-bottom review that was completed earlier this year.

That work focused on how the departments organized, safe systems approach, which is really a more a comprehensive look at how we're organized for safety in the department in addition to the actions that we take out on the streets and how we kind of cultivate a safety culture at the department.

So all that's in here.

On the next slide, one of the highlights is reducing vehicle speeds.

I think it's no surprise to folks that speed is very highly correlated with safety.

Just one little fact for today that a three mile per hour reduction in average speed on a corridor reduces fatal crashes by 50% and injury crashes by 27%.

So just small changes in how we design our streets to encourage folks to drive safely makes a huge difference in outcomes.

Street design is one of the strategies.

One of the callers mentioned that in the opening public comment period.

It's also education campaigns like these kids are involved in, traffic calming on neighborhood streets.

Then what's new to this plan is a vehicle element.

And there's a big discussion of vehicle safety and vehicle speeds in that new component.

On the next slide highlights equity.

Of course, the city has had a race and social justice initiative for many years.

And Greg highlighted the work of our Transition Equity Work Group and the framework that was recently completed.

We built on those very robust activities and planning efforts to think about kind of three key places here.

One is how we engage with community as Greg highlighted the work that Joanna has led, amazing work in this process.

But then beyond how do we continue to engage folks both in the planning and decision-making processes.

And then how one of the ways in which folks can actively participate in the current phase of engagement is helping us develop our implementation strategy, which gets out the one that's called TJ2 there.

How do we prioritize investments across the city?

A third one is around the cost of transportation.

So we have a number of cross-cutting strategies to make the transportation system more affordable, both in terms of things like discounted ORCA cards to expand access to transit, new proposed programming around affordable access to car share, bike share, and scooter share.

And so a whole kind of package of ways to help create a more affordable transportation system.

On the next slide, I mentioned that this is part of our ongoing work now, along with reviewing the draft plan of continuing to flesh out the implementation strategy and where and when we invest in different communities is a key part of that.

Say, in partnership with the comp plan anti-displacement toolkit that we're developing with them is a big focus.

And this again will be continued to be developed in what's called chapter four in the part one document.

Okay, on the next slide, get into climate action, our next kind of major goal area.

City Council has uh, establish the goal of a carbon neutral transportation system by 2050. This is a very ambitious goal for the city, uh, where, because we have, uh, you know, a carbon free electrical grid in the city, um, the majority of our emissions are from transportation, uh, around 62-ish percent.

Um, as a city, we've seen reductions in per capita emissions, but because we're growing so fast, our total emissions have stayed relatively flat, slightly down, but looks more flat than down.

And we need to see a big shift.

So, um, this includes, uh, both, uh, what we call mode shift, which is shifting away from driving that makes means for.

uh, walking, biking, taking transit, um, and also electrification.

On the next slide, uh, you'll see, uh, the focus on electrification.

SDOT's role here, um, is, uh, first of all, I should say the city has a transportation electrification blueprint, and it cuts across, uh, obviously the city light and, uh, Office of Sustainability, many folks across the department, across the city, including Estat.

Estat's role, though, we obviously don't run the transit system and we don't, you know, most of the emissions are from private vehicles.

So our role is as an encourager, regulator and supporter.

on we play a role in helping Metro on some of their bus purchasing through our transportation benefit district.

And then in regulating things like the scooter share and bike share and for higher companies.

On street charging is one of the components.

The best charging is off street, but there are will continue to be needs for in street charging over the coming decades.

All right, on the next slide is the mobility-related key moves.

So you can see those five moves there.

And when you think about kind of the heart of transportation to people, it's, you know, people usually think about mobility first.

It's getting from point A to point B.

And we'll continue to play a key, you know, top priority function for the department, of course.

I'll highlight two moves on this one so you can see on the next slide about transit.

I mentioned the benefit district where the city purchases additional bus service hours, so additional service, more frequent bus runs, more frequent bus in the city.

Then we also make street improvements like bus lanes.

We update our signals to be more friendly to transit.

cover roll and bus stops and things like that.

So, you know, big picture is, there'll be some important shifts over the next two decades around when light rail continues to grow and expand, how does the bus system change with those expansions?

We'll see fewer, you know, routes coming all the way downtown, there'll be more restructuring of service around our light rail stations.

This Creates lots of opportunity and has been a big focus of the plan.

We've done an amazing job serving trips from residential areas to downtown and back.

And now there's an opportunity to serve more of those trip types that not straight to downtown trip with the expansion of light rail.

So really exciting time for transit.

Another focus on the next slide is around freight and goods movement.

Um, in a growing city that, uh.

To the next slide, please, um, uh, growing city means, uh, obviously increased congestion and, uh, how do we keep freight moving in the face of that?

So, um.

A proposal, a policy proposal in this plan that we're going to do a pilot on is having combined freight and transit lanes, um, in some circumstances.

And so this is can be a great win win to keep buses and freight moving.

Especially when we're talking about connections into the industrial districts from the industrial districts to the, the interstate and things like that.

So the other.

Kind of big key direction for the plan is on goods goods delivery, you know, huge expansion in small package delivery and how do we both manage that and.

And, you know, meet the needs of the in street package delivery.

Okay, 4 more slides the.

A new focus for the Seattle transportation plan is on people, streets and public spaces.

This livability area that had been really underdeveloped at the department.

Includes a variety of new tools and strategies around supporting our neighborhood commercial areas to have more vital.

More vital streets supporting those good example might be Ballard Ave. or Roberto Maestas Festival Street on Beacon Hill.

And then also thinking about streets as public spaces where, you know, an example in Pioneer Square is Occidental Lab.

So one other area is in this idea of community and mobility hubs.

And you'll see on the next slide on Beacon Hill, What I think is a really good example in the city today includes the Roberto Maestas Festival Street I just mentioned.

So it has a public space component, has great bike parking, has some long-term bike parking.

The buses stop right in front of the light rail station.

And of course, with so many new light rail stations and the growth of light rail, we can think about how to make those work and be best connected into our neighborhoods.

So great team at both Sound Transit and the city.

working on this with Metro and thinking about the community and mobility hubs.

Last but not least, on the next slide, you'll see our focus on maintenance and modernization, and this includes two big ideas.

One is, obviously, we want to maintain our system.

We also need to be repositioning our system to accommodate the growth that's planned through the comp plan, as Joanna mentioned.

So that's kind of part one.

Part two is the new technologies and forms of mobility that are coming to our streets and how do we manage and leverage those.

And we have a new and emerging mobility element that helps us do that.

On the last slide in this section, I wanted to highlight what might be one of the most important things in the plan, which is that We obviously need to continue maintaining our system, but as we do, we want to leverage those investments for system transportation to move more people to create a safer, more equitable system and accommodate that future growth.

An example here from Delridge, the Delridge, just the resurfacing was half the cost of that corridor project.

We obviously upgraded the bus service, bus stops, sidewalks.

So, leveraging that resurfacing investment to really transform that corridor and move way more people up and down Delridge.

It's a good example of what we're talking about here.

So now I'll hand it back to Joanna to talk a little bit more about the next phase of engagement and where we're headed.

Thanks.

Thanks, Jonathan, as noted, we have been out in the community since May 2022. that has included both virtual and in person meetings, especially as the community has started to open back up post pandemic and as well as a statistically valid survey that was conducted as part of phase 2. We've engaged our community statewide, but I also want to emphasize our focus to reach out to communities that have not traditionally.

Been engaged in our planning process as a director spots mentioned setting tables and inviting folks to tables in a right way.

I'm really focusing on centering the voices of our communities of color.

And underrepresented groups in planning and decision making processes.

I especially wanted to highlight the work we've done with 7 community based organizations and recognize those organizations this morning.

This included the Asian Pacific American labor alliance, the central area collect collective.

The Duwamish Valley sustainability association Estelita's library.

The community of South King County and a legacy of equality leadership organization.

And smash the box together with these community based organizations.

We also partnered with a number of community liaisons in partnership with the Department of neighborhoods to ensure that we were elevating the voices of these communities.

In addition to the virtual and in person meetings.

Um, as I noted, um, uh, the phase 2 outreach included a statistically valid serve survey that quite consistently supported our inclusive outreach that we've and conducted.

1 thing that I do want it to emphasize is that.

Um.

As the SEP is taking a look at both future and also taking care of what we have, the community was very supportive of both of these efforts and didn't see a contradiction between these 2 work elements that the SDOT is delivering.

Additionally, as part of this, and I'll highlight in the next slide, whether through community events, the survey or online engagement, there revealed a quite consistent set of desires reflecting not multiple Seattle's, but really emphasizing this move for one Seattle.

And so with that, I'd like to go into the next slide and kind of share what we've been hearing over these last rounds of engagement.

And so just really emphasizing that people across the city feel the need to make our system safer for all travel modes and Seattle residents do not see reliable delivery and movements of goods and safe safety personal mobility as as as at odds.

People understand that a mature, rapidly growing city for such a Seattle can't rely on personal vehicles for mobility.

When we don't have space to build more roads and so to to get where they need to.

To increase the needs for capacity for more efficient and reliable transit service, but also ensuring that goods and services can continue to move efficiently.

Our community wants an option to be able to safely ride bikes for short trips.

And they want themselves their children and parents to be able to solve to safely walk, bike and roll around the city.

This desire for safety and mobility reflects a desire for choices that are safe and reliable ones.

The Seattle residents across the city feel strongly that we have under invested in neighborhoods that were redlined and they believe that this is.

Just to address the, it is just to address the consequences of the under investment, even if it means that some neighborhoods may get less investment during this time around.

And also, additionally, in regards to climate goals, people understand that we have to adapt a low carbon or low carbon or carbon free feature based on cleaner forms of transportation.

More conducive to shorter trips via walking, rolling and biking.

And so those are just a number of things that we've been hearing and continue to process as we develop the plan and ensuring that we are reflecting the community voice and the draft plan that we, that is in the community today.

In this next slide, I just wanted to note the Council proviso and the statement of legislative intent response and how we've been stepping through that.

And this really has been kind of a two-parter for us addressing process, especially in regards to our engagement process, submitting the work plan and engagement plan, and also continuing to identify ways to support engagement throughout the STP process.

Additionally, as part of the Part 2 of this is in the development of the plan itself, looking at how the light rail expansion beyond ST3 is being addressed and which parts of the document that is contained in, including the integration of modal plans, as well as strategies for including federal funding and reducing vehicle miles traveled into the document.

The next slide highlights what we have next up in regards to the continued work plan for the Seattle transportation team, including phase 3, as we've noted in the very beginning and continuing to.

Get elements of engagement out there, especially around the draft plan itself, the draft environmental impact statement and the implementation strategy.

And I'm really encouraging folks to go to our online engagement hub in order to engage with us.

As noted before, we will continue to refine performance measures and implementation strategy.

As long as reviewing forthcoming transportation and bridge asset management plans.

And multiple projects that advanced division, as we continue to see that was getting get developed as inputs into the.

Additionally, as the close of the comment period will occur late in October, we will continue to refine and develop the mayor's recommended and finalized environmental impact statement and transmit that to city council adoption in early 2024. At this time, I'd like to just close with a little bit of, if there's any questions or comments, and also as we continue to step through engaging our community, looking at partnership opportunities with council to build community awareness.

And I'd like to stop there and see if you have any questions or comments, or identify any ways we can partner with you and your offices to build awareness with the community.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Director Spatz and Joanna and Jonathan.

And why don't you go ahead and leave that slide up just so people can see how they can get involved and provide another round of input to this very robust draft.

And just wanted to make some initial comments here and then open it up to my colleagues.

Again, this is a visionary document which will support decision making over the next couple of decades.

It successfully synthesizes the disparate modal plans.

And now you have the document to serve as the transportation element for the big redo of the comprehensive plan next year.

So just those two achievements are commendable and really appreciate all the different ways you've tried to conduct outreach to do it differently and more comprehensively.

And I appreciate the vision and the amount of time spent on this, and also look forward to other decision-making documents that we're still hoping to see soon.

The bridge asset management plan, as well as other asset management plans that the Seattle Department of Transportation has and is updating.

You know, I know people struggling to get around town.

They're interested in what can be done now, as well as what is the vision for the future.

And so I know that's a tough balance.

The polling that we did, the number one issue, transportation issue, was fixing potholes and repaving streets, and that was followed by transit.

There was also a question that we asked in our poll about bridges, and 73% said they wanted to fix bridges now and not wait to fix bridges.

And I know the Biden administration has been making great strides across the nation with their fix it first focus.

And I would hope that, I know the rest of SDOT is working on that, and I'd like to see more of that.

You mentioned 100 people touching this plan, and wanna see that same level of intensity for fixing what we have, including our bridges.

And this is more just to set the context for the public that this transportation plan is not everything because there are asset management plans in addition.

So I was hoping if Director Spatz is still available to talk about the asset management plans to sort of flesh this out, that would be appreciated.

For sure.

Thank you.

Thanks for the opportunity to mention that.

I'm very excited that by the end of the year, we're going to have the bridge asset management plan and have completed all the recommendations in the bridge audit.

And these were important commitments that I made in my confirmation hearings a year ago.

I think tomorrow will be the one year date of my second confirmation hearing.

And we have had a large number of people very, very laser focused on a much more sophisticated approach to the bridge assets that sets an expected service life for each of the bridges and then envisions what interventions are needed when to attain that desired service life.

So I'm very excited to be bringing that forth shortly and happening concurrently with that is the transportation asset management plan, which is for our non-bridge assets And so all three of these things will really work together to inform future decisions of the department.

And I feel good that you know sort of by the end of my first like year and a half here the department will have plans to use to guide future investments for all of our major activities for the non-bridge assets for the bridge assets and the plans for the street network that are contained in the Seattle transportation plan.

So it's a really great set up for strategic thoughtful decision making and teeing up important decisions to the policy makers.

Thank you, Director Spatz.

And thank you to your team for encouraging us to get the word out, to make comments on this draft.

And starting with part one, which is more digestible, and then digging into part two, if you want.

I did send the links out in my recent newsletter.

I encourage other council members to do that.

I, of course, posted some initial comments and our commentary on it.

But those are just initial thoughts now, but that's all posted on my blog as well, if people are interested in those comments.

But the big picture was to also stay focused on what we have in front of us today and the backlog of maintenance needs that we have.

with our infrastructure while this other work is going on for the future.

Colleagues, any comments or questions for our esteemed team here?

The esteemed team.

Councilmember Morales.

Hi.

Sorry.

Now my camera is not working.

I do have a few questions, if I might.

Yes.

And I think I'll start with what might be higher level questions.

I'm looking at slide 9 with leading with safety and I had.

I wonder if if you could talk a little bit about how the plan as a whole.

Is you mentioned designing streets for safety and then listed a few things, including posting speed changes and and talking about vehicles.

So, I wonder if you could talk about how designing streets for safety.

Looks aside from posting speed changes and in in terms of the new component of vehicle safety, if you could explain a little bit more about what that means.

And I apologize.

I will admit I have not read all 600 pages of the plan.

So if you could give us high level responses, that would be great.

Maybe I can sort of start and have staff jump in with more detail.

A lot of our thinking around, you know, how to design streets for safety is refined by the findings in the Vision Zero top to bottom review.

And we have elevated the city traffic officer, Venu Namani, to be the chief transportation safety officer of SDOT, the first person to have such a title.

And he and his staff are working on a safety implementation plan that will come out probably early next year.

And that will be in addition to the three other plans that we mentioned.

So there'll be a whole lot of detail on how we're pursuing Vision Zero, you know, over the next few calendar years in that plan.

But I think that one of the great benefits of having a sort of all modal plan like the STP is that we can tease out places where, you know, freight and bikes need to coexist.

or freight and bus needs to coexist, or bike and bus needs to coexist.

Those key arteries in the city that are critically valuable to multiple modes.

And then we can be really making thoughtful designs in those places.

A project like that that I'm very proud of is, you know, we're just getting ready.

We've awarded the construction contract, but construction hasn't yet started on the East Marginal Way project.

And that's a project where it's a very important freight corridor, but it's a very important bike corridor to West Seattle as well.

And the project's going to create concrete separation in between those two modes, having identified that both of them really need to share that important north-south corridor.

And the STP, by incorporating all the modes together, will really help us identify those places where we really need to be thinking very carefully about multiple modes working together.

With that, I'll pass it to our staff for further comments.

Sure.

Thanks, Greg.

Well, Councilmember, in terms of, you know, when we're thinking about designing a street to, you know, beyond just reposting speed limit, I think a lot of folks can imagine a street like the interstate, which is designed to go really fast, and a street like Uh, in your district, California, or many of the streets and pioneer square where.

It's just really hard to go really fast, right?

The, the there's on street parking.

The lanes are narrower their street trees.

There's frequent crosswalks and signals or stop signs and lots of things that help.

Uh, convey a sense that this is a place where there's a lot more going on.

Uh, there's a lot.

Let me sorry to interrupt.

But.

That that's not my district.

That's district one and all of those things.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Council member.

I thought I thought that's my herbal.

That's a question.

I'm very sorry.

That's quite all right, but I appreciate your list of very useful ways to slow down traffic.

And I will say none of those things exist on Rainier or MLK.

And I think that is partially my point here.

We do have streets where it is harder to go fast and where just posting a speed change may be useful.

In district two, that is not the case.

So I am interested and I will take A close look at the plan and look forward to continued conversation here, but I am interested in knowing what specific.

Changes are going to be made on the corridors that we have some of these arterials where we can post 25 miles an hour, but that doesn't stop somebody from speeding through.

So, I'm interested in continuing that conversation and.

And maybe what I will ask as long as we're talking about design is how the plan.

Addresses the priorities of dealing with climate change and here again, it's a design question for me.

I appreciate that.

We are transitioning to electrification.

We're trying to get our.

are, you know, Metro's bus fleets electrified.

But what else can we do to really make getting on the bus the easy choice?

And I am interested specifically in what it means for how we're designing our neighborhoods and our streets to help facilitate that.

Thank you.

Any other comments or questions?

I do have one question on timing.

Is it true that there's a, you might have mentioned this, is there an environmental impact statement that goes along with this and is there a deadline for people to comment on that separate from the actual Seattle Transportation Plan?

I think there might be an earlier deadline and so I just want people to be aware that there is this EIS comment period.

Yes, Chair Peterson, we do have a comment period for the DEIS that's live right now that ends on October 16th.

Meanwhile, the draft plan comment period ends on October 23rd.

Oh, okay.

Thank you.

October 16th for the EIS and October 23rd for this round of comments on the STP?

Correct.

Okay, great.

That's helpful.

Okay.

Well, thank you very much.

I know that council members may reach out to you as they dig through the plan, and thanks for being available to the general public, our constituents as well.

Thanks for the presentation today.

Appreciate it.

All right.

Thank you.

All right, colleagues, let's go ahead and move on to our last agenda item today.

Will the clerk please read the full title of the fourth agenda item into the record?

Agenda Item 4, Council Bill 120642, an ordinance relating to street and sidewalk use, amending the street use fee schedule authorized by Section 15474 of the Seattle Municipal Code for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

Today, another esteemed team of SDOT is here and will walk us through their proposal to temporarily eliminate certain fees for food trucks and vending carts.

And this would be throughout the city.

So I'll go ahead and turn it over to Elise from SDOT.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Nice to be here today.

Thank you for having us.

I'm kind of glad I got to sit and listen to the briefing we just had about the The STP very exciting stuff.

So Bill is going to share the presentation.

It looks like it's just loading for me.

I don't see it quite yet.

There it is.

Alright, so.

Today we're talking about the street use fee schedule and some amendments that are coming to you related to the downtown activation plan.

My name is Elise Nelson.

I am interim street use division director as well as manager for the public space group in street use.

So happy to be here today.

Next slide.

We always like to start with our vision mission values and goals.

And so our vision is really Seattle is a thriving equitable community powered by dependable transportation.

And we have 6 core values that help us to achieve this vision.

Including equity, safety, mobility, sustainability, livability and excellence.

And I think here today, when we're talking about our street use schedule, the types of things that we're going to be talking about really help us achieve livable neighborhoods.

And I think you'll see that as we talk about how these types of activities bring livability to our city streets.

So today our presentation and the amendments in front of you are to make certain uses of the public right-of-way free for street use permitting.

Basically we are looking at right-of-way vending as well as small scale community events and those would be free until January 1st, 2026 with this proposal.

Next slide.

This will be a pretty brief presentation.

We're going to go over the background, the proposal itself, and then have some time for questions if needed.

So, the background for this current amendment is related to the downtown activation plan that's underway.

The plan really calls for us to support community driven activations and creating some great activations of our public spaces.

And so one way the city can help make that happen is to look at eliminating fees for this type of activity.

So in street use, we issue permits for both temporary and year-round vendors, things like food trucks, food carts, as well as public uses of the street, like small-scale block parties and medium-scale community events.

So we're looking at making these types of things free to help just activate public spaces across the city.

One thing to know is while the impetus for this action, what is the downtown activation plan?

Our permits apply citywide.

And so just, you know, we will be making these changes apply.

throughout the city, not just downtown itself.

And I think that that will be great because then more people can take advantage of kind of coming up with some great community activations that they can do in their neighborhoods, as well as offering vendors more opportunities to try out vending across the city as well as in downtown.

Again, it'll be for public events on our streets and sidewalks that are permits issued by street use, as well as both temporary and year round vending permits that we issue.

So that's it today.

I'm happy to answer any questions.

These changes are really going to help us deliver on some of our goals with the downtown activation plan.

We're excited to get see this move forward.

Thank you.

Colleagues, we'll, I know the goal is to pass this prior to the budget season starting, so we'll be able to do that, having it back at our committee for passage on September 19th, and then it'll go to the council meeting that next week.

So, and Calvin Chow will be available to, answer any questions, but the fiscal note is important.

It's important to note that the city would forego a relatively small amount in fee revenue and that this is a temporary program that can be revisited in a couple of years.

Colleagues, any comments or questions now?

Otherwise, we'll be able to rapidly move this forward at the next committee meeting.

All right.

Well, thank you for that brief presentation, and we've got all the information we need to hit the ground running at the next committee meeting so that we do this on time for SDOT.

Thanks for having me.

All right.

Bye.

Thank you.

Okay colleagues that was our last item on our agenda so this concludes the Time is 11.14 a.m., and this concludes the September 5, 2023 meeting of the Transportation Seattle Public Utilities Committee.

The next meeting will be on Tuesday, September 19 at 9.30 a.m., and as a reminder, City Council typically suspends regular committee meetings during our two-month budget review process, so our September 19 meeting will likely be our last meeting before December.

All right.

Well, thank you, and we are adjourned.

Bye.